Suggestions and Requests

[JustAnotherNerd]

I didn't send you, I was genuinely asking if you had because some of the terminology you were using sounded like that.

Aight. My bad then.
Then I'd say, possible to balance even for 5.000+ years, just depending on govrnment civics king/tsar/emperor or, say, council/secretary maybe president with republic civic.
Dictator, tyrant whatever thereis wide choise.

But anyways, we, at least me, don't see your opinion on it, not negative, not positive, absense of answer is a good soil for seeds of doubt :c

 

[Leoreth]

I already answered, see above. The bottom line is that I need concrete suggestions or otherwise there is little to comment on besides what I already wrote.

 

[Publicola]

I have a suggestion for expanding the role of middlemen in international trade. Usually, getting a trade route with another nation requires signing open borders with that nation. I propose instead that it can be possible to get trade routes without a direct OB agreement, so long as you have an indirect connection.

Here's the gist: after you get a certain tech (perhaps Currency?), you have the option of signing a diplomatic 'trade agreement' with any nation you already have OB with. This enables trade routes and resource trading between you and any civ that is connected (via OB) with the nation you signed the agreement with. For every trade route that results from this trade agreement, the middleman gains a fraction (perhaps 25%) of the commerce gained.

This proposal would basically monetize OB agreements, incentivizing all nations to make more of such connections, and add to the historical nature of the gameplay. Any thoughts or related suggestions?

 

[Leoreth]

I have been thinking about this for a while.

The problem I have with the current trade system is that every city can trade directly with every other city. It would be much more interesting if trade to a far away city had to pass through other intermediate cities, who would benefit from that trade in the process. Similar to EU4, trade would actually benefit civs most by flowing through them, which is more realistic and makes occupying cities along trade routes rewarding.

Unfortunately, the game would need some awareness of neighboring cities in some kind of cities graph. That could complicate matters.

 

[Power_of_Beer]

A few more suggestions for starting techs, as some of them have been carried over from vanilla RFC and make no sense historically speaking, at the time the specific civ spawns:

- Holy Rome should start with Sailing. It makes no sense that they dont, in 800 AD, and considering they know calendar which requires sailing. How were the Anglo Saxons supposed to go to Britain? Don't tell me the ones that stayed back didn't know how to sail.
- Russia should start with Fishing and Sailing. I think we can agree that they knew how to bind a worm to a string and hold it into water. And considering that early Russia represents the Rus principialities who were strongly influenced by Varangian trade, it makes sense historically to give them Sailing (and whould help AI Russia, which is usually totally backwater, with some trade routes along rivers)
- Arabia should start with Sailing.
- Mali should also get Fishing. Sailing, maybe not.
- Japan should get Calendar. Yes. I've seen them in 1600 without it.
- Rome should start with Agriculture; the civs starting without Agriculture are then Phoenicia, Greece, Persia and Ethiopia. It was probably know in these areas during that time, but i guess its ok to represent the reliance on other food sources (fishing and nomadism)

 

[citis]

Rome discovering agriculture represents the transition from roman kingdom to roman republic (or roman republic to roman empire? well something like that). Thus let it as it is.

Medieval civs start without sailing because they were too close to Optics. However, this was before making guilds required for Optics. Thus they can get it.

 

[mrrandomplayer]

Khmer should also start with Sailing, maybe Calendar too. Thailand should start with Meditation.

 

[citis]

If Khmer start with calendar their UHV will become almost redicolously easy. Even sailing seems too much.

 

[mrrandomplayer]

Ah right, forgot about UHVs. It's still a little bit bizarre to have Khmer start with a Galley yet not know how to sail.

 

[citis]

Ah right, forgot about UHVs. It's still a little bit bizarre to have Khmer start with a Galley yet not know how to sail.

I cannot forget UHVs. But even then, calendar is A and Z in Indochina, it makes the difference between struggling cities with unhapiness and unhealthiness problems and a descent economy with populous cities and many specialists. 660AD is too early to have so advanced civ in Indochina with large expansion potential.

Note that it is common to see Thais controlling all of China. The reason is their large expansion potential, due to large cities.

As for the galley, I prefer Khmer to start without it than seeing them overpowered.

 

[calad]

I am the only one who sees a problem that there is no unit between rifleman and infantry? 14 vs 20 strength cap simply is enormous.

 

[Leoreth]

Isn't Rifleman strength 16?

 

[KeeperOT7Keys]

it's 14 I just checked civilopedia, but the case is whatever the rifleman's strength there is still a huge gap between musketmen and infantry unit's strength, and it will be always unbalanced to cover this area with only one unit. I think instead of adding a new unit we should reduce the strength's of post-renaissance units

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

How about increasing the strength of the Musketman to 10 and decreasing that of Infantry to 18? Lastly add a new unit: Modern Infantry / Squad Infantry with strength 24, +25% City Combat available at Plastics. It never made much sense to me that after Robotics you can suddenly draft mechanized vehicles.

Also can we please please please nerf Axes or revamp them entirely? How does it make sense that a bunch of thugs armed with axes can consistently wipe out an orderly formation armed with spears, which is what Spearmen represent? It should be the other way around. Axes should be good in forests and cities, spears on open fields and hills. Also Horse Archers don't work as they really did either. Historically they could run literal circles around infantry formations (yes with spears), harassing them with arrows and galloping away before the enemy could so much as scratch them. The best way to deal with them was with archers, which ironically are about the worst unit to use in the game for that purpose.

Proposal for new classical unit balance:

Axeman: 30 Hammers (instead of 35), 4 Strength, 1 Move, +25% Forest, +25% City Strength, requires Copper or Iron
Spearman: 35 Hammers, 4 Strength, 1 Move, +25% vs. Melee, +50% vs. Mounted
Archer: 25 Hammers, 3 Strength, 1 Move, +25% Hills Defense, +50% City Defense, +50% vs. Mounted

Also remove Immunity against first strikes of Horse Archers, heck maybe all mounted units except maybe uniques, they have easy access to Flanking 2 which provides it anyway so it's redundant.

Edit:
Oh and Pikes and Heavy Footmen! Give the former +25% vs. Melee and +50% vs. Mounted and half the latter's bonus vs. Melee to 25% instead of 50.

 

[calad]

Problem to me is lack of units.

On medieval there are axemen, swordmen, spearmen, pikemen, macemen, heavy swordmen, crossbowmen, horse archers and knights. This is like rock, paper and scisor meaning you can always counter one unit with other.

After this comes musketmen and cavalry. Then riflemen and grenadier and then only infantry. I excluded machine gun men because they can only defend. I dont know why this is like this but game becomes much more simply and unbalanced until modern era when there are tanks, bazookas, marines and paratroopers. One solution would be to continue giving more archer and melee units along gunpowder units.

 

[citis]

The standard core unit strengths are:

warrior: 2
axeman: 5
swordman: 6
heavy swordman: 8
musketman: 9
rifleman: 14
infantry: 20
merchanised infantry: 32

I agree with Imp. than ancient core unit should be spearman and not axeman. Generally, spearman was prefered in most (semi-)proffesional armies, while axes where more barbaric raid units.

Musketman should remain as it is. In fact muskets weren't much better than other units of their time.
Rifles on the other hand are a huge step, the strength gap is justified.
And infantry shall be strong relatively to rifle, rifle is manual, while infantry carries semiautomatic weapon.

Merchanised infratry and all modern units seems unrealistic to me for this mod. They have never been used really, and their strength is somewhat exaggerating. Maybe remove them completely, or make them slightly stronger.

 

[calad]

Another problem I see is that forest gives +50% defence which is ridicilous high. Forest with hills is +75%. I know this is a game but even if an elite unit attacks in forest against a recruit it is very likely destroyed.

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, forest to 25% makes a lot of sense in my opinion, if more defensive options are needed Forts can be buffed instead.

It's hard to talk about unit changes because I feel more extensive changes are required there.

 

[Nyayr]

Musketman could have a reduce in cost then compared to longbow, might even tweak a musketman to 8 (similar to a heavy) and reduce their cost the whole idea of a musketman, was easier to train, less experience needed, etc... they also needed pikeman bad to keep of cavalry, pick and shot tactics where common from the 1450-1700's. Also make units that have specialized musketman more potent so they can remain. Maybe also give units like Netherlands have more troops to start? Extra heavy swordsman, maybe even a cuirassier, as now you can easily defeat them it requires about 4 bombards and a hand full of troops.

A mechanised infantry might be similar to regular infantry, only they are mobile and have march, so maybe fraction stronger but more cost, so they can exist next to eachother and one doesn't replace the other. A tank though is the cavalry of the modern era and they should be pretty powerful, it would make anti-attack more useful to have, and also anti tank shouldn't get outdated unless you make the Sam infantry also capable agains tanks, their stinger looks a lot like an rpg anyway. Maybe gives tanks a negative when attack cities -10, -15 or -20? They weren't designed for urban warfare.

PS: Maybe an option might be that after building as fort (+25%) you can upgrade it later on with some tech to a blockhouse (+35/40%) and later into a bunker (+50%) or something, or perhaps make a fort improve in quality with technologies? This might be far fetched but maybe certain troops being able to build a cheap defence meassure like a pallisade barrier of like +10%, like archer unit and later gunpowder units, but not musketeers. Just throwing some ideas.

 

[Leoreth]

Mechanized infantry doesn't just represent mechanization, but also technological advantages in general. Infantry is basically WW2 technology, and is vastly outclassed by modern infantry in terms of communication and recon ability alone, aside from common modern equipment.